Reading the Fine Print

by
Thomas A. Droleskey

Anxious for encouraging news in the midst of the grip that Modernity has on the world and that Modernism has on the Church, many people leap at various headlines claiming to betoken some significant "change" for the better. More often than not, however, the "fine print" behind the headlines speaks of no change at all. Indeed, the "fine print" usually reveals that the encouraging headlines have been manufactured precisely in order lull people into thinking that all is well when it is note.

Yes, there are times when people really do want to grasp at straws and to suspend rational thought in order not to recognize the fact that the people in civil power and the men in ecclesiastical power are enemies of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, that they are exponents of one aspect or another of the Revolution that has been ongoing in the world since an Augustinian monk by the name of Father Martin Luther, O.S.A., posted his ninety-five theses on the church door in Wittenberg 489 years ago.

One of these instances occurred when the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected on April 20, 2005, by the Conclave of Cardinals to succeed John Paul II. Many people believed that the choice of the new papal name, Benedict, was somehow a "link to Tradition," breaking with the conciliar papal names "John" and "Paul." Joseph Ratzinger is well-schooled in the history of the Church. He does nothing spontaneously. He chose the name Benedict in large part to signify his openness to the very modernist propositions that had been condemned by Pope Pius IX and Pope Saint Pius X. You see, the last pope who took the name of the great saint of Monte Cassino, Saint Benedict, the former Giacomo Della Chiesa, was a protege of modernists, especially Mariano Cardinal Rampolla, and sought to distance himself from the anti-modernist campaign of his predecessor, Pope Saint Pius X.

Writing on the Tradition in Action website shortly after the election of Benedict XVI, Dr. Marian Therese Horvat assembled the following facts, representing the "fine print" of the reality behind the choice of the name Benedict by Joseph Ratzinger:

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger chose the name Benedict XVI, some Catholics sighed in relief that he had honored the memory of a pre-Vatican II Pope. My friend Jan, who read several optimistic accounts presaging better days ahead for traditional Catholics, pointed this out to me. “Benedict XV was a Pope of reconciliation and peace during World War I,” she told me. She had read that he had a great devotion to Pope Pius X, and that his voice would choke when he spoke of him. “So,” she concluded, “Pope Ratzinger is telling us he will return to tradition and bring peace to the world and the Church.”

For Jan and for many others who may be fooled by similar optimistic appraisals, I think a little history review is in order.

First, the supposed grand friendship between Benedict XV and St. Pius X is quite imaginative. Under St. Pius X, Archbishop Della Chiesa (the future Benedict XV) had been sent to Bologna in exile from the Roman Curia because he was distrusted as a protégé and supporter of Cardinal Rampolla, a known modernist and freemason. Further, St. Pius X withheld the cardinal’s hat that normally went with the Bologna Archbishopric for seven years, a patent sign of his distrust and a deliberate humiliation to the arrogant Della Chiesa. Only three months before the conclave did Della Chiesa finally become a Cardinal.

In revenge, his first act after he became Pontiff was to send the valorous anti-modernist Cardinal Merry del Val packing, and to choose as Secretary of State the modernist Pietro Gasparri, another Rampolla protégé and his closest assistant. This act alone marked a clear break with the pontificate that had just ended. It certainly indicated no great devotion for St. Pius X, as we are told today, but rather fidelity to the modernist Rampolla.

Let me point out, I did not have to search hidden archives to find these facts. I simply went to my library, and checked in three different works on the Papacy and in the Catholic Encyclopedia to confirm what I knew. The election of Giacomo Della Chiesa was “as explicit a reaction against the preceding regime [of Pope St. Pius X] as it was possible to get.” (1) 1. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, (Yale University Press, 1997), p. 253.

A Rampolla Protégé

To understand Benedict XV, one needs to know something about his mentor, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Secretary of State under Leo XIII. At the turn of the 20th century, Rampolla was already well-known for championing the errors and spirituality that St. Pius X would term Modernism. A Vatican insider, he patiently and steadily prepared the way for Vatican II and the destruction of Catholic Church that came as a consequence.

At the conclave after the death of Pope Leo XIII in 1903, it was expected that Cardinal Rampolla would be the next Pope, which would have been a great victory for the modernist faction. Actually, he was leading in votes when his election was suddenly vetoed. The Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, through his representative the Cardinal of Krakow, exercised an age-old privilege and vetoed the election of Rampolla. The Emperor had been presented irrefutable evidence that the Cardinal, besides being a modernist, was a member of Freemasonry and Grand Master of the secret sect known as the Ordo Templi Orientalis. 2. Mary Ball Martínez, The Undermining of the Catholic Church (Hillmac, Mexico: 1999), pp. 32-33. During the pontificate of St. Pius X, Rampolla was forced out of the Curia. From his Nunciature in Madrid, he had to take steps backward and move his seriously injured modernist faction underground. But at the next conclave, Rampolla was ready to settle scores. This time one of his protégés would sit on the Throne of Peter. It was Giacomo Della Chiesa, a perfect candidate. He was a graduate of the Instituto Capranica, the most liberal seminary in Rome teeming with strange new theological doctrines and modernist errors. And he had a very close affiliation with Rampolla, who had chosen Della Chiesa as his private secretary.

The role of Giacomo Della Chiesa: “Reconciliation”

Benedict XV came into his Papacy as Europe was entering World War I. In his first Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi issued November 1, 1914, the Pope, who refused to take sides in the Great War, made a dramatic call for peace between the warring factions of Europe. He also made it clear that inside the Church he was calling for a stop to the war against the modernists.

Even while he referred to the “admirable fruits” of previous pontificate, he called for concord among the members of the Church, that is, the modernists and the ultramontanes – the traditional Catholics who had been strengthened by Pius X. This “peace” orchestrated by Benedict XV is what gave the modernists the opportunity to emerge from their dark, semi-occult caverns back into the light of day with a comfortable position in the Church.

Next, Benedict XV targeted the most militant bloc that had organized to fight against the modernist errors, the group called the Sodalitium Pianum in France. This association of lay men supported by many priests were dedicated to keeping vigil on expressions of heresy in teaching, preaching, and publishing, following the norms set forth by Pius X. Pope Benedict XV and his Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri dissolved the Sodalitium Pianum, calling a halt to the “anti-modernist witch hunt” in the name of reconciliation. (3)

In agreement with Rampolla and Gasparri, Benedict XV opened the doors for modernist errors to infiltrate the seminaries and Catholic schools of Europe. For example, in a new spirit of inter-confessionalism that encouraged “Christian unity,” he supported the famous Malines Conversations between Anglicans and Catholics. 3. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, pp. 254-5.
4. Quoted from the Osservatore Romano, 1958, in Martinez, The Undermining of the Catholic Church, p. 58.

Who Will Cardinal Ratzinger Reconcile?

In the temporal sphere, then, Benedict XV tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the warring powers of Europe. In the spiritual sphere, he was more successful in imposing a halt to the war that faithful Catholics were waging against Modernism.

Now, since the first days of his pontificate, Benedict XVI has been speaking of peace, reconciliation, and concord. Speaking in Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace to representatives of the schismatic, heretical and pagan sects, he appealed to believers of all “religions” to become promoters of peace and unity. (5) 5. “Church Committed to Ecumenism, Says Pope,” Zenit, April 25, 2005. In the first few weeks of his Papacy, he already stated his aim to dialogue and build more bridges with Muslims, Jews, and even Buddhists. He also announced he was ready to take steps to achieve “communion” with the Schismatics and Anglicans. We already know that as Cardinal, he masterminded the “breakthrough” agreement that resulted in the signing of the disastrous Catholic-Protestant accord on the doctrine of justification in Augsburg in 1999 [click here to know its serious consequences].

To date, therefore, everything leads one to believe that Benedict XVI will follow the ecumenical path forged by the post-conciliar Popes. But I think that most probably Ratzinger has another item on his agenda.

I believe Benedict XVI intends to oblige traditionalist Catholics to “reconcile” with Vatican II and the New Mass, to finish with our resistance and incorporate us in the Conciliar Church. It would be a maneuver similar to that of Benedict XV 100 years ago, when he struck his blow at the Sodalitium Pianum and the anti-modernist reaction. It is my opinion that we should be prepared for this kind of progressivist maneuver.

Benedict XVI is highly intelligent. He knows that most people pay attention only to the headlines, rarely delving beneath the surface, which is why he believes he can use such terms as "living tradition" and "love" as vessels into which he can pour whatever Hegelian contradictions with the Church's authentic patrimony he believes are necessary to accommodate the "needs" and the "mind" of "modern" man. For example, the average Catholic does not understand or accept that false religions cannot contribute to the building of a "better" world. He does not understand or accept that there are no Protestant "churches" outside of the Catholic Chuch. He does not believe that it is necessary to convert anyone to the true Faith, whether Protestants or the Orthodox or Jews or Mohammedans or anyone else. The "modern" Catholic, that is, the Catholic who bothers to practice the conciliar faith at all, has been catechized by the false ethos of the Novus Ordo Missae and of the entirety of conciliarism to accept contradiction and ambiguity and uncertainty as part and parcel of his ordinary life as a believer.

The Revolutionary Modus Operandi

Modernism combines in itself all of the errors of Modernity, including the belief that reality exists solely in the mind and is thus capable of the sort of Hegelian, dialectical, evolutionary change embraced by the likes of the late Fathers Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac. This, of course, goes against all logic and reason, which are part of the rational nature that God has implanted in our immortal souls. It is also opposed to the sensus Catholicus that we received in the Sacrament of Baptism, which is why all revolutionaries, social and ecclesiastical, must break down our trust in both natural reason and our supernatural faith as Catholics by the use of slogans, linguistic tricks, psychological tools such as what is known today as "thought control," and actual psychological intimidation to get us to accept uncritically things that are opposed to be reason and Faith. Indeed, the goal of both social and ecclesiastical revolutionaries is to get ordinary people to doubt their sanity if they dissent from the slogans that are repeated almost as mantras in order to stop all rational thought and thus to eliminate all active opposition to their revolutionary programs.

The repetition of slogans and mantras and outright lies leads our friends and relatives and fellow parishioners to consider us stark raving mad for daring to dissent from the "received teaching" of the Revolution. The revolutionaries themselves don't have to harass us that much to put pressure upon us. The revolutionaries receive all the help that they need from our friends and relatives and associates (as happened in the times of Arianism and in the Protestant Revolt in England and during the French Revolution, among other times in history):

"You believe that God created the world in six days? What's wrong with you? Why don't you believe in evolution?"

"You go to that 'old' Mass? What's wrong with you? Are you more Catholic than the pope?"

"What do you mean that the Catholic Church is the true Church? Where does it say that in the Bible? Who are you to say that you have the 'only' truth? Don't you realize that truth can contradict itself?"

"Vatican II changed everything. Get with the times. You're out of touch. You need to update your theology."

Indeed, a constituent element of the revolutionary program is to make the average Catholic believe that miracles performed by Our Lord and His saints never really happened. This is quite manifest, as I pointed out briefly in Richness Beyond Compare in November of last year, in the ways in which the Collects of the Novus Ordo Missae omit references to the miracles performed by the saints, thereby expressing its lack of belief that those miracles occurred in spite of the fact that the Church herself had accepted these miracles over the centuries. The Faith must be made "reasonable" to the "mind" of the "modern" man. Anyone who adheres to "legends" is a person who refuses to "re-think" the Faith as it has been "re-thought" by the experts, who are, of course, the wolves masquerading as shepherds. Who are we to question the "insights" of these "experts"?

In addition to making us feel insane for adhering to the fullness of the truths of the Faith as they have been handed down to us over the centuries under the infallible protection of the Holy Ghost, an essential part of the revolutionary program of thought control, therefore, is to provide superficial bits of apparent "good news" to give those who still possess a modicum of the reasoning process--and who have not been totally desensitized by sloganeering and who have not been totally diverted by attention paid to bread and circuses--the illusion that all is well, that "progress" is being made in the world and, in the case of Modernism, in the Church.

How many times have President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "progress" is being made in Iraq? How many times did the late President Lyndon Baines and his Defense Secretary, Robert S. McNamara, say that "progress" was being made in Vietnam?" How many times are we told by the leeches who are fed at the money trough of phony pro-life politicians that we have a "pro-life president" as one anti-life policy after another is advanced (including the pending authorization of "over-the-counter" sales of the so-called Plan B "emergency" abortifacient contraceptive)?

How many times have we been told about the great "achievements" of the "liturgical renewal" of the past forty years as our churches empty and a handful of Catholics retain belief in the Real Presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass? How many times have we been told about the "progress" that has occurred as a result of the "ecumenical movement" while people in false religions are left to wander about their entire lives without the supernatural helps offered them exclusively by the Catholic Church? How many times have we been told, both by the late John Paul II and now by Benedict XVI, that "progress" has been made in the Church since the Second Vatican Council, that we are living in a veritable "springtime of the Church"? If this is the springtime, folks, I'd hate do see what the dead of winter looks like.

As is the case with all revolutionaries when part of their schemes gets revealed or blows up in their faces (see Badenov, Boris, or Coyote, Wiley, or Sam,. Yosemite), the revolutionaries in the Vatican must provide their conservative enablers with bits of cheery news that will be reduced to headlines so as to provide a convenient smokescreen for the continuation of business-as-usual. Two recent examples of this from the ecclesiastical world will suffice to illustrate this point.

Much was made about the fact that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was going to issue a document dealing with the admission of men inclined to the commission of perverse acts in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments from entrance into a seminary and/or ordination to the Holy Priesthood. The actual document, issued by William Cardinal Levada, last year is so full of holes as to be worse than if it had never been issued. New Oxford Review did a devastating critique of its lack of efficacy, demonstrating that the Vatican is not serious about screening out men who are perversely inclined from being admitted to study for the priesthood, whether diocesan or religious, and from then being ordained to the priesthood.

The Vatican left the matter up to the bishops and/or the heads of religious communities to make the determination about the fitness of such men for Holy Orders, ignoring entirely the fact men must be free of any perverse inclinations to be considered for priestly ordination. There will be no change of the longstanding recruitment and protection of perverts into the conciliar priesthood and episcopate. All of the headlines about "tough new standards" coming from Rome was nothing other than an attempt to pacify those few Catholics who care about these matters into thinking that the new pontiff had "taken care" of a problem that has caused great scandal to the faithful and to the world-at-large since coming into public view after years of reporting in various Catholic journals about it (and after years of efforts on the part of faithful Catholics to bring these matters to the attention of Vatican officials, including John Paul II personally).

Similarly, headlines blared on various websites about Cardinal Levada's insistence a few months ago that no agency of the Catholic Church, including Catholic Charities, could place children for adoption in the "homes" of men or women steeped in perversity. It was all a shell game. It is always a shell game with the conciliar prelates, seeking to grab a few good headlines while their agenda of Modernism, which includes diffidence to abject evils continue unabated in ostensibly Catholic dioceses and agencies and schools and colleges and universities and seminaries. The actual truth of the matter is that the Archdiocese of San Francisco, headed by Archbishop George Niederauer, who was appointed by Benedict XVI to replace Levada after he was elevated to his current position in the Vatican, is going to "outsource" adoptions to another agency, which will indeed comply with the civil laws in California preventing "discrimination" against the placement of children in "homes" on the basis of perverted "orientations." Archbishop Niederauer, who has a long track record of "sensitivity" in the areas of perversion, said that the new arrangement could be considered "remote cooperation" in the process of adoption of children by "couples" steeped in perversion.

Remote cooperation? Hardly. This is an abandonment of the protection of the souls of the children who have been entrusted to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is really one of the principal characteristics of the conciliar era: a belief that it is not matter of supreme urgency to advance the salvation of souls and to avoid anything and everything contrary to this end for which Our Lord gave up His life on the wood of the Holy Cross and entrusted to the Apostles the absolute obligation to pursue until His Second Coming in glory at the end of time.

Yes, you see, most, although not all, prelates in the conciliar church do indeed accept perversion as a form of "love" rather than one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. Most conciliar prelates who "think" in this way are either steeped in this perversion themselves or have friends in the priesthood and hierarchy who are so inclined. It is thus of no consequence that an innocent child be placed for adoption in a home where the "love" these prelates so admire, if not practice themselves, is exhibited. It is thus of no consequence that the souls of children placed in Catholic schools are corrupted by false doctrines and by propagandizing in favor of perversion, all done in the name of "love," you understand. There is no truth. Everything is a matter of subjectivism, liturgically, doctrinally, and morally.

As I have noted endlessly throughout my writing and teaching and speaking careers, it is one thing to sin and to be sorry, seeking out the Mercy of the Divine Redeemer in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. It is quite another to persist in sin unrepentantly, worse yet to encourage others to persist in their sins and/or to promote it in every aspect of our popular culture. Sin is what caused Our Lord to suffer unspeakable horror during His Passion and Death. We would die from fright and shame if we had any idea just how much our seemingly least significant caused Our Lord to suffer as He underwent His Passion and Death to redeem us, to pay back in His Sacred Humanity the blood debt of human sins that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God. We must despise our owns and exhort others to quit their sins and to join us in doing penance for our own sins and those of the whole world. We love no one authentically if we do or say anything, either by omission or commission, which reaffirms anyone else in their sins.

Just as you will not hear most priests and bishops in the conciliar church speaking as the Cure of Ars did throughout his priestly life, so is it the case that you will not hear most priests and bishops in the conciliar church speaking about the horror of personal sin and how we must root it out from our lives and from the larger life of civil society. Yes, sin and sinners there will be until the end of time. Granted. We must strive, however, to make great efforts in the pursuit of personal sanctity with every beat of our own hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We must love God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, proving that love for Him by how we choose to live our lives in cooperation with the graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. Those who choose to persist in sin and who seek to justify it in their own lives and in the lives of others are the enemies of the Cross of the Divine Redeemer until such time as they make a good confession and receive sacramental Absolution for their sins.

God asks the repentant sinner to prove his love for Him by living the fine print on daily basis, that is, by accepting all of the crosses and penances that come his way as being perfectly suited for him to help him to pay back the debt he owes for his forgiven Mortal Sins and for his unforgiven venial sins, as well as his general attachment to his sins. God asks the repentant sinner to lay down his life for Him in many and varied ways, which is why He gives the repentant sinner just enough time in this mortal vale of tears to make efforts to accept the events of each day as opportunities to help make reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world, offering everything, both good and bad, that happens to Him through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

The anxieties of the present moment in the life of the Church Militant on earth should inspire us to consider how to die to self more fully so that we can give to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart more and more offerings as her consecrated slaves. Yes, we should know who the enemies of Our Lord are, both in the conciliar church and in the world, and pray for them as we flee from everything to do with them and their errors. We should be read, however, to initiate the authentic love of Saint Lawrence the Deacon, who was put to death on this very day, just three days after the pope he served so selflessly, Saint Sixtus, suffered his own martyrdom at the hands of Roman authorities who hated Our Lord and His Holy Church just as much as the world and all of its sophisticates who believe that they do not have to subordinate their lives and that of their nations to His Social Kingship hate Him today.

Here is a very moving account of the life of Saint Lawrence, written by a repentant sinner by the name of Saint Augustine:

The Roman Church commends this day to us as the blessed Laurence’s day of triumph, on which he trod down the world as it roared and raged against him; spurned it as it coaxed and wheedled him; and in each case, conquered the devil as he persecuted him. For in that Church, you see, as you have regularly been told, he performed the office of deacon; it was there that he administered the sacred chalice of Christ’s blood; there that he shed his own blood for the name of Christ. The blessed apostle John clearly explained the mystery of the Lord’s supper when he said Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. St Laurence understood this, my brethren, and he did it; and he undoubtedly prepared things similar to what he received at that table. He loved Christ in his life, he imitated him in his death.

And we too, brethren, if we truly love him, let us imitate him. After all, we shall not be able to give a better proof of love than by imitating his example; for Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we might follow in his footsteps. In this sentence the apostle Peter appears to have seen that Christ suffered only for those who follow in his footsteps, and that Christ’s passion profits none but those who follow in his footsteps. The holy martyrs followed him, to the shedding of their blood, to the similarity of their sufferings. The martyrs followed, but they were not the only ones. It is not the case, I mean to say, that after they crossed, the bridge was cut; or that after they had drunk, the fountain dried up.

The garden of the Lord, brethren, includes - yes, it truly includes - includes not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings, my dearly beloved, who need to despair of their vocation; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.

So let us understand how Christians ought to follow Christ, short of the shedding of blood, short of the danger of suffering death. The Apostle says, speaking of the Lord Christ, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. What incomparable greatness! But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man. What unequalled humility!

Christ humbled himself: you have something, Christian, to latch on to. Christ became obedient. Why do you behave proudly? After running the course of these humiliations and laying death low, Christ ascended into heaven: let us follow him there. Let us listen to the Apostle telling us, If you have risen with Christ, savor the things that are above is, seated at God’s right hand.

No matter how much we are hated for holding steadfast to the authentic Tradition of the Church without making any concessions whatsoever to the ethos of conciliarism and its errors, we must continue to "read the fine print" contained in the book of true learning that is the Holy Cross. That is, we must embrace the Cross in our own lives and in the larger life of the world and the Church. We must always keep in mind that this is the exact moment that God has known from all eternity that each of us would be alive. The graces won for us on Calvary by Our Lord are as powerful now as they were nearly two millennia ago when the Apostles set out from the Upper Room in Jerusalem to go about the business of planting the seeds for the conversion of the world. And we must never fail to call error by its proper name.

Indeed, error must be confronted and denounced. Pope Saint Pius X noted this very plainly at the beginning of Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord's flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking "men speaking perverse things,""vain talkers and seducers,""erring and driving into error." It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of Our office.

That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary mall.

Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which Cod alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all hut fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

Once indeed We had hopes of recalling them to a better mind, and to this end We first of all treated them with kindness as Our children, then with severity; and at last We have had recourse, though with great reluctance, to public reproof. It is known to you, Venerable Brethren, how unavailing have been Our efforts. For a moment they have bowed their head, only to lift it more arrogantly than before. If it were a matter which concerned them alone, We might perhaps have overlooked it; but the security of the Catholic name is at stake. Wherefore We must interrupt a silence which it would be criminal to prolong, that We may point out to the whole Church, as they really are, men who are badly disguised.

We must recognize the disguises as we flee from these enemies of Our Lord. We must, as Saint Francis de Sales noted in An Introduction to the Devout Life, remember the following:

It is a work of charity to shout: "Here is the wolf!" when it enters the flock or anywhere else.

We must keep Our Lady--and all of the angels and saints (and the Poor Souls in Purgatory) company at the foot of her Divine Son's Cross each day in the offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. It is there that we will be schooled in how to "read the signs of the times" by keeping close to Tradition without compromise and by seeking to foster a spirit of prayer and penance and almsgiving in our families as we do all for God through the Immaculate Heart that was pierced through and through by the sword of sorrow that had been prophesied by Simeon at the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple. Our Lord wants to use the offerings we give Him through His Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to help bring about the Triumph of that same heart, a triumph that terrifies the devil and his minions in the conciliar church and in the world. Like Saint Lawrence and each of the martyrs of the first centuries of the Church, we must be plant the seeds without looking for any results, hoping and praying that we will be able to see, having been the beneficiaries of the Divine Mercy at the moment of our Particular Judgments, the restoration of Tradition in the Church and Christendom in the world.

Once again, find a good place to sanctify and to save your souls in the catacombs offered by priests serving us outside of the conciliar structures. God does not expect us to "solve" the larger problems facing the Church and the world. He does very much, however, want us to seek to love Him as He has revealed Himself to us authentically and exclusively through the Catholic Church so that we will not permit our sensus Catholicus to be broken down by the efforts of the revolutionaries to desensitize us into accepting novelties and errors that come from the devil and are meant to lead us into Hell for all eternity. God wants us to know the enemy and to flee from him. We are indeed living in the times of the Great Apostasy foretold by so many, including Saint Nicholas of Flue and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich.

Placing our trust, as always, in Our Lady and her Fatima Message, may we treat others charitably and with forbearance in these most difficult of times, praying for them fervently in our time before Our Lord's Real Presence and forgiving them right readily for and all sins they may commit against us as we are forgiven by God Himself in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. The intentions of all hearts and the circumstances of all lives are made manifest on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead. Transcending all of the disagreements, large and small, we have with others during these troubling times, let us stay always prepared for the only judgment that matters to us, the Particular Judgment, and hope to join with all the Catholics from whom we might be estranged at present a glorious reunion in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

Never lose heart. Indeed, maintain hearts that are steadfastly and perpetually united with and consecrated to the twin hearts that wrought our Redemption, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Lift high the Cross and consider it an unmerited privilege to share in Its work of Redemption.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence the Deacon, pray for us.

Saint romanus, pray for us.

Saint Anne, pray for us.

Saint Joachim, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.

Saint Stephen the Protomartyr,whose mortal remains are buried next to Saint Lawrence, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered. Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray. O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls.